The Becks Depression Inventory II (BDI) is a 21-item multiple choice self-report measure of depressive symptoms. It is one of the most widely used psychometric tests for measuring the presence and severity of depression. It was developed in 1961 by Aaron T. Beck and is available in several versions, including the original BDI (BDI-1A), the BDI-FastScreen for medical patients (BDI-FastScreen) and the BDI-Short Form (BDI-S). The BDI has been correlated with a number of other measures of depression, such as the hopelessness scale and the Scale for Suicide Ideation, and it has demonstrated good construct validity. It is also sensitive to change in PD, as evidenced by several treatment-outcome studies.
Beck Depression Inventory-II items that assess somatic, affective and cognitive aspects of depression. The BDI-Short Form, which is a subset of the BDI-II, can be administered to individuals over 13 years old and provides scores from 0 to 63, with higher scores indicating greater depressive symptomatology. The BDI is a psychometric instrument with adequate internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.7) and test-retest reliability in the range of 0.84-0.96. It has also been shown to have good convergent validity, as it correlates well with the PHQ-9 and CES-D, screening instruments for other mood disorders.
Exploring the Beck II Depression Inventory for Mental Health
The BDI-Short Form has been shown to have good discriminant validity, separating outpatients with Major Depressive Disorder from those with dysthymia with sensitivity and specificity of 96% and 0.99, respectively. It is also a valid and reliable measure of the severity of depressive symptoms in a nonclinical community sample. Despite these strengths, future research is needed to examine the dimensionality of the BDI and investigate its psychometric properties in medical samples.